


The Nature of Fire

by wartransmission



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, non-sburb AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:06:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wartransmission/pseuds/wartransmission
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In answer to the quote prompt on HSWC:</p><p>"I am writing with a burned hand about the nature of fire." - Ingeborg Bachmann</p><p>----</p><p>Love, as much as people like waxing lyrical on how it’s like fire and how it hurts when one comes too close, is different. Or that’s what Dirk thinks, in any case. Because if it were any similar, then love would very much be a concept he could grasp. Fire is physical, touchable, and he could always find a way around burning himself with it. Fire is heat and sustenance when he needs warmth and food, fire is his molder whenever he takes on another robotic project, fire is life in all ways but one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nature of Fire

More often than not, people forget that fire has its uses, that it doesn’t just burn and kill. People wax poetic on how dangerous it is, make it into metaphors that come out as erroneous because fire  _gives life_  as much as it burns.  
  
Love, as much as people like waxing lyrical on how it’s like fire and how it hurts when one comes too close, is different. Or that’s what Dirk thinks, in any case. Because if it were any similar, then love would very much be a concept he could grasp. Fire is physical, touchable, and he could always find a way around burning himself with it. Fire is heat and sustenance when he needs warmth and food, fire is his molder whenever he takes on another robotic project, fire is life in all ways but one.  
  
Love, however, is intangible. It has been, for almost fifteen years of his life. Because love starts from home and from family, which he finds is practically nonexistent in his case. His home becomes his  _home_ , his refuge and haven, only when he grows and realizes that he’s capable of molding metal with other metal, that he’s capable of giving almost-life to metal beings. His brother, which is his only family, is rarely ever home when he finds the mind to understand the concept of loneliness. He’s always away because of his movie projects, always away because of one reason or another. It’s hardly like having family at all.  
  
When he thinks of love, he thinks of it with a cold heart. How else should he think about it? How can he think warmly on the very nature of love, when he has never felt it?   
  
(He thinks nothing will change his opinion. He thinks himself firm on the belief up until he feels the ache in his chest, which he ignores for a long while in favor of more important things.)  
  
But then he becomes sixteen, one of the so-called awkward ages of adolescence, and finds himself stumbling into love when he meets Jake. Or, rather, he finds himself waist-deep into the mess of it, because he has only just realized that friendly affection can only come so far before one is already in love.  
  
He thinks that it is temporary, at first, because Jake is clearly attractive in person and the mind is easily swayed by appearances due to instinct. So he disregards it for a long period of time, thinking that it is infatuation, although he acknowledges to himself that he enjoys sharing the warmth between them when Jake forgets the reality of personal space.  
  
It's pathetic, in all honestly, and that alone is what forces him to avoid Jake for a week, makes him dread facing the other in fear of being figured out and found in a state so humiliating that Dirk may as well wish to never to be seen again.  
  
The attempts of avoidance are useless.  
  
Jake already knows by the end of the week, which is proven when Jake comes directly into his house and plays a (ridiculously emotionally-charged) round of questions with him. Jake ends up asking, “ _Do you happen to have feelings for me that are more than platonic?_ ” He pauses for a minute in time at that, saved by his own sense of self-preservation, and asks right back, “ _What made you ask that?_ ”  
  
It’s impossible to avoid the reality of it when he’s faced with it, in the end.  
  
“Will you ever answer my question regarding your feelings?” Jake asks in turn, face flushed with his own embarrassment.  
  
He answers, “Will you end the game so I can?” Because he knows that it’s futile to keep playing around it when the very man he’s in love with is acknowledging the fact that he’s hopeless at hiding anything that isn’t anyone else’s secret.  
  
“Sure,” Jake says. Dirk thinks he may as well be offering his metaphorical heart up for observation, and it feels horrible.  
  
“I like you,” he says, making sure to keep Jake’s gaze, “and it’s not in a platonic manner.”  
  
When Jake grins, it feels like home. It feels like being safe, being warm, being cared for in ways that he wasn’t. “I knew it. And I’m willing to give it a shot. Before you say anything on my nature to be quixotic,” Jake interrupts when he attempts to say something in his defense, “I have thought about this. For a long while.” He pauses, before shrugging sheepishly. “For a year, to be honest. I’ll be rather affronted if you still remain firm on seeing me as spurious in this occasion.”  
  
“You’re sure about this?” He asks, because he can’t help it.  
  
“Am I willing to date a persnickety and excessively cryptic man? Yes, I very much am,” Jake says, the grin softening into a smile.  
  
He can’t help but say yes to that. And if he finds himself prone to smiling in the weeks to come, prone to feeling that sudden ease in his chest when Jake holds his hand, then maybe love has its uses after all. Maybe just as much as fire.


End file.
